The Dark Reaches (30 page)

“I’ll risk it,” Hiso said. “Now. Admit me to my ship.” She heard the caressing note in his voice, the ugly note she still sometimes heard in nightmares of Rafael. Triumph and power, a silk wrapping over the steel of cruelty. The fuser pressed more tightly to her back, and she turned her head and looked at him. “Take it away,” she said, “or I won’t do this. I’ve got nothing left to live for anyway. Not if Iain is dead.”

She saw the little flicker of satisfaction and amusement in his eyes, felt the weapon’s pressure lift away from her back as the pain in her heart eased, just a bit.
If Iain really were dead, if they’d caught Esayeh’s ship, Hiso would have taunted me with that now.

And at that instant the tall, dark guard behind Hiso struck him down.

She gaped at them both, stepped back against the cold metal of her ship’s hatch, expecting the guard to attack her next. But instead he half bowed. “That was a gift from Madame Perrin Tereu,” he said. “According to orders. She said to tell you, you have a good man.” He bent and picked up Hiso.

“Thank you,” she faltered.

“My city’s duty is first to Madame Tereu,” the man said. “The First Pilot has been known to forget that.”

Linnea nodded numbly and slapped her palm against the identification pad by the hatch. It dilated, and her ship welcomed her—the familiar scent of metal and plastic, the faint familiar hum of a jump engine on standby. As the hatch closed behind her she was already opening her piloting shell.

She touched it carefully, letting the ship know that she had returned, that she would be piloting. Around her in the semidarkness, the boards woke to life. She had very little time, she knew that; that blow would certainly not have killed Hiso, and he would order her stopped as soon as he could.

At least, on so short a jump, there was no need to bother with the elaborate life-support connections. She climbed into the shell clothed, settled back, felt the familiar sensation of her ship shifting to accommodate her body in a comfortable acceleration couch. Then the cold tingle she knew so well, as the neural connection leads touched her temples; the faintly dizzying sensation as they made their way into her brain, to the programmed sites.

Then the shell vanished, the ship vanished, and its eyes were hers. She made the gesture that brought the launch engine to life, checked the ship’s cradle—nothing was restraining it. One with the ship, she rose into the black sky.
Iain, I’m coming.

High overhead she saw the cold green glow of Neptune at first quarter, burning bright, sharp-edged against blackness as her ship climbed from the frigid crystalline plain. Frozen ammonia, nitrogen snow. The moon’s precise horizon receded quickly, curved; the universe beyond it was empty.

She thought about the warmth of human places, crowded and smelly and familiar no matter where they were—bubbles of life, tiny and fragile, in cold and dark that went on without end. But it was that way everywhere, every life a bit of warmth and brightness between two darks. . . .

She clung to stubborn hope—making herself believe that time reached on ahead to a future of free air and blue skies for all these people—a future that children alive today might see instead of being sacrificed to the Tritoners’ bitter bargain.

Linnea guided her ship toward the dark. She feared that she was about to face the end of her hopes—the clear bitter point from which there could be no returning. When she would know the exact proportion of her happiness and Iain’s that she had wasted with her fears and her pride.

When it was too late.

She wondered if there was any chance, any at all, that she would sleep again in Iain’s warm arms. Anywhere this side of death.

Hana floated beside Iain’s cold-sleep container in near despair. Over the past hours, Linnea’s fear for him had become her own. She would, in any case, do everything she could to save a patient. But no one had ever been cured of an infestation once it had become established. Pilang was called in on those cases sometimes, on Triton—but only because everyone knew that deepsiders had the gen tlest, surest poisons.

Hana looked again at the commscreen linked to Iain’s container, at the number burning red in one corner: the bot count in Iain’s blood. It had not changed in the last hour. But he was very sick; irreversible damage to his organ systems, to the structures of his brain, might already have begun.

The cold sleep was helping, Hana thought, and the attending doctor at the clinic, an old man named Raymon, agreed. Cold sleep might even have stopped the invasive process entirely; it was too early for blood assays to tell them that. But Iain could not stay in stasis forever. There were troubling signs that his kidney had indeed been damaged by the stab wound. And eventually, even in cold sleep, that would have its deadly effect.

And where was Pilang? Still she had not returned; still no message came.

Linnea had not arrived from Triton. Not yet. She was tough and determined, Hana knew, and she would find a way if there was one.
But on Triton, if Kimura Hiso wants to keep you, he keeps you.
So Tereu had said. And Hana could believe it.

And that was another problem: Tereu. The Tritoners would assume she had left against her will—they would never imagine that she had boarded willingly, willingly put herself into the hands of old mad Esayeh. Old mad Esayeh whom she, the First Citizen of Triton, evidently knew of old. . . . So strange. Hana had settled Tereu into a sleep sack in the staff room here, after giving her a drug patch to handle her adaptive nausea. Further measures would have to wait until Tereu decided what she was doing here. And until someone else had time to deal with the matter.

Hana’s fingers clenched tight on the handhold above Iain’s cold-sleep container.
Where the hell is Pilang?

She floated out to the front office, where Pilang kept her commscreen, and looked around, again, for any sign of a message. Even on paper. Slips of paper were stuck everywhere on the walls, reminders of appointments and therapeutic levels of drugs and cryptic notes from Pilang to herself, but nothing new. At that moment the air system sighed again, drawing loose material toward the catch screen in the center of one wall.

That slip of paper there—

Hana dove and snatched it, then hooked on next to the grating and smoothed the paper out over her palm.

Hana’s heard beat hard and slow. That date and time—she looked at the chrono again. Less than two hours from now. Pilang and Mick had left before Esayeh and Linnea and Hana had all jumped to Triton. . . .

So they should have been back hours ago.

Hana dove into the passage, pulled herself along to the cubby where she’d stowed Tereu. “Ey! Wake up!”

Tereu blinked at her sleepily in the dimness.

“Did you pass word of an attack to Cleopa? An attack now, tonight?”

Tereu rubbed her face. “I—there hasn’t been any new alert. No news of one, I haven’t had a chance to—”

Her voice faded as Hana dove back up the corridor, woke her commscreen with trembling hands, coded a call to Docking Control. “Is Pilang’s ship back? She was out with Drojo, I think. Emergency run.”

The young girl at the panel shook her head, bewildered. “No word, no word yet.”

“Any other ships?”

The girl looked down at a commscreen Hana couldn’t see. “One just docked, no ID, but standing orders from Esayeh say let that one in whenever it comes—”

“A new ship?” Hana said. “Put the pilot on with me.”

“She’s gone through alread—no, she’s locking down now. A moment, Hana.”

Hana waited, breathing hard, then shaming tears of relief flooded her eyes when Linnea appeared in the screen, tense and disheveled but alive. “Lin,” Hana said, her voice thin and strange, “Pilang’s in a trap. A Tritoner trap. She went out to pick up some cold sleepers, she thought she knew when the Cold Minds were coming, she should be back by now—”

Hana saw Linnea’s eyes widen. “I need a jump point.”

“Control will set you one. Control, I need you to send Lin to family vessel
Sojourner Truth
. Orbit should be on file.” She gripped the handholds beside the commscreen and tried to keep her voice steady. “Less than twenty-five minutes, Lin. If the attack time is right.”

“Right. Out now.” And Linnea was gone.

Linnea locked down her ship with trembling hands, her eyes on the orange-circled unknowns that had just appeared in the display over the board. They seemed to be hanging back. Had they seen her approach? Were they only waiting for her to leave her ship to make their move? Or were they ignoring her, waiting for some other signal?

It didn’t matter. The jumpship Pilang had arrived on was still sealed to the lock next to Linnea’s, on the shadowy side of the bulky old ship. Someone long ago had painted a pattern of stars on the outside of the battered cylindrical vessel, a shape like a bent-handled cup.

Now the ship was dark, silent. Fearing ambush, Linnea had not signaled—a good thing, she knew with a shudder. The Cold Minds were early.

But no matter. Pilang was somewhere in that ship. And Mick, too.

One thing at a time.
Find them. Then worry about getting them out.

Linnea pulled on her thermal suit and sealed the front seam, feeling the heating unit buzz to life. Pilang would surely have jogged the ship’s life support, but it would be very cold in there still.
Please, both of you, be safe.

Dark inside the way station, and so cold the air hurt her lungs. Linnea turned on her headlamp and pulled her way along the metal passageways, batting aside floating detritus, watching the shifting shadows. “Pilang!” Her voice echoed back to her. “Pilang! Are you here?”

Then, tailing on the last of the echo—a reply? Linnea clung to the wall, called again, cocked her head and listened.

Faint, distant. “Lin! Here!”

That way. Linnea launched herself along the passage, still calling, following Pilang’s voice through the twists of the passage, past the black doorways of empty compartments to the center of the ship. Long before she reached it she saw the faint light from the compartment where, she guessed, Pilang was working to wake the sleepers.

Linnea swung through the hatch, stopped herself, and looked around at the dim space. Pilang did not turn; she was bent over the stiff, dead-looking body of a toddler. “Lin,” she said in brief acknowledgment. “We had trouble finding the sleep cases, Drojo’s off warming the engines, we’ll be off in a moment—”

They both heard the clank of docking grips letting go, felt the big ship lurch as a small one jumped away. Pilang looked grim. “Or, Drojo decided you could be the one to lift us home. . . .”

Linnea saw Mick hanging anxiously in the dimness outside the circle of light where Pilang was working. “Pilang,” she said, “they’re here. They’re already here. It’s too late, we’ve got to go—”

“I’m taking the children,” Pilang said. “There are only three, they’ll fit in one passenger shell. The Cold Minds won’t be interested in the adults, but we have to take the children.” Mick floated up beside her, holding a thermal blanket; she turned a pale, frightened face to Linnea.

“No time,” Linnea said fiercely. “I said, they’re here already. Bring the children cold, or leave them. If we don’t leave now we’ll—” Her head went up sharply, and she broke off, hearing the sudden hollow roar of jets from a ship touching the
Truth
. “They’re docking.”
We’re dead.

But Pilang was stuffing the child back into the cold-sleep bag. “We’ll hide. Mick, take this one, I’ll get the other two. Lin, close that hatch over there, the parents are still in there, maybe they won’t find them. . . .”

How do we hide from thermal sensors? Three of us, and three bodies?
Linnea looked around, her mind racing. Cargo. Storage. Everything the family that ran the ship wanted to keep safe . . .

Food.
“Freezers! There’s got to be a big freezer in a ship that goes this far out, runs this slow.” Linnea looked around the big, shadowy space, a confusion of storage cubbies, hatches, dark control boards. A child’s toy, a black-and-white stuffed bear, floated past her face, and she jumped. The light from her headlamp made the shadows leap wildly. She felt Mick grab her arm. “Lin—”

There. A big hatch with a temperature readout, soft green, saying
-19.9
.

At the same moment they all heard the thin screech of metal being cut. “They’re coming in,” Linnea said. “Hurry!”

“In there?” Mick squeaked, as Linnea pulled open the refrigeration unit.

But Linnea saw Pilang suddenly half smile.
She understands.
“Yes, Mick, in there. Quick now.” At that moment, they all felt a faint breeze, heard a distant hiss of atmosphere. Linnea saw Pilang’s eyes widen.
They’re in.
No one said anything.